for him is not clear. That it was not a new experience is certain. It was only a new turn of that willingness which he had always carried in his heart and been ready to express in external action as the occasion of duty or service called it out.

As the school work at Oberlin during this first summer was devoted more particularly to the preparation of teachers for their work we do not find that James was present during the term after he and his brother were admitted in May. Of the general results of their preparatory study when they left the Elyria school and appeared at Oberlin, President Fairchild declares that they were "abundantly prepared to enter the freshman class in any American college."

W

VI

OBERLIN, 1833-1835

HAT were the scenes, the influences and the associations into which this earnest and sensitive young student was to come, as he found himself prepared for college life? As the Classical School in Brownhelm and the High School in Elyria had arisen almost at his very door so here again the incipient college was ready only a few miles across the forest from his own home. The first tree to fall in the new clearing for the college campus was cut down near what is known as the "historic elm" by his brother Charles, who had come over to assist Peter Pindar Pease, the earliest of the colonists in starting the work. This was in the spring of 1833. By December the first college building was completed and occupied by the one teacher and thirty or more students who were already present. By February, when the school was incorporated, there were fortyfour students on the ground, twenty-nine boys and fifteen girls, half of them from the East. The first circular published in March stated that "While care will be taken not to lower the standard of intellectual culture, no pains will be spared to combine with it the best physical and moral education. Prominent objects of the seminary are the thorough qualification of Christian teachers, both for the pulpit and for schools; and the elevation of female character by bringing

within the reach of the misjudged and neglected sex all the instructive privileges which have hitherto unreasonably distinguished the leading sex from theirs."

The spring and summer months were as busy as ever months were, in the East to secure money and colonists, on the ground to clear away the trees and erect buildings. The summer term opened May 7th, and showed a wonderful increase of teachers and students. Among the new teachers were two graduates from Amherst College, Rev. Seth Waldo who had been elected Professor of Languages, and David Branch who soon became principal of the Preparatory Department; his wife also taught Latin and French. James Dascomb, a graduate of Dartmouth College and Medical School had come to be Professor of Chemistry, Botany and Physiology. Mrs. Dascomb, his newly married wife, who had been a pupil of Miss Grant's at Ipswich, Mass., became the principal of the Ladies' Department. During this first summer term there were one hundred and one students in attendance-sixty-three young men and thirty-eight young women. In the autumn Henry and James Fairchild, with two others, made the first freshman class. That a fully equipped freshman class of four members could be organized the second year seemed encouraging, to say nothing of the excellent quality of those who composed it. The general attendance was increasing constantly, and there were regular preparatory students with the definite plans of a college course ahead of them. Many more, and by far the larger proportion, were school-teachers or prospective school-teachers who had come to spend a few months for the purpose of increasing their knowledge and efficiency.

Much has been said in student reminiscences about

the " primitive conditions." But primitive conditions prevailed everywhere. In most instances they served to stimulate endeavor. They were endured because a necessary part of the early life, simple living being only a circumstance and in no sense an end. The early inhabitants saved and economized because they had a I definite aim in view-the enrichment of the world in its greater values.

The homogeneous character of the first comers was not due to the force of any local pledge or covenant, but to the fact that those who came had been previously prepared for such a life as this. The new composite life which soon revealed itself was a natural result of the meeting and blending of rare personal forces already inspired by a deep interest in education and religion. Teachers and students threw themselves with enthusiasm into the work. All the great questions relating to human life, of the individual and of society, were handled with absolute freedom, and with all the enthusiasm of first-hand study, as if the destinies of a great country were being settled then and there, The inhabitants of New England had sometimes seemed to lose this sense of America's greatness. Here the coming greatness was not doubted nor the significance of present responsibility for that future obscured.

Although the school at Oberlin was not started with the thought of becoming a rival of other schools, it began from the very first to attract students who had already begun their studies elsewhere. There was something in the enthusiasm of this new enterprise which appealed to vigorous youth, and the promise of

work towards self-support was influential. The religious emphasis was also more pronounced here than in other schools. Henry Fairchild never forgot his first visit to Oberlin. On his way home from school at Elyria he became so impressed with the earnest and happy religious character of the students and the people that on being asked by his parents as to where he had been he replied that he felt as if he had been in heaven. The piety even in this early period was "not of that sort which rejoices in quiet and seclusion, but which led to earnest consecration of property and life to the work of reformation and salvation. A large portion of the students first on the ground had their eyes upon the foreign missionary field, and were pledged if the way should open, to spend their lives among the heathen. Few of them actually went into that particular work, for when they were prepared no missionary society desired to send them. But they found at home an equally important and self-denying work to do."

Oberlin's original attitude to slavery was set forth by James H. Fairchild in an address in 1856 before the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society of Oberlin :-" The antislavery element was not incorporated into the original constitution of Oberlin except as such an element is necessarily implied in the very idea of a Christian colony and school in a land where slavery exists. You will not understand that the original founders of the institution and the early settlers were not anti-slavery men. The question was not at that time a practical one before the people of the North. There was a settled feeling-a foregone conclusion against slavery as an evil and a curse. But the American Colonization Society was supposed to present the only practicable